Notes from Ron Rolheiser's 2nd talk at the Henri Nouwen Society's 'Way of the Heart Conference' - June 11, 2016. An interesting take on artistic genius, spirituality and struggle...
- Henri Nouwen - a saint for the complex
- Seeing Henri as an artist, rather than as a theologian
- He was a struggling artist
- Yet faith-filled genius
- Janis Joplin once said "It is hard to be a rock star - making love with 20,000 people and then coming home to sleep alone."
- Paul Tillich "I should have never been married - if you can't sleep with everyone, you shouldn't sleep with anyone."
- Genius born out of anxiety
- I don't know if life always welcomes me
- His neediness, he demanded that his friends be there for him
- Ordinary life is difficult for the rock star
- You only remember the one who rejects you rather than the many who praise you
- Henri had a natural insight into the human psyche
- He was a natural mystic
- As humans, we struggle with certain 'primal' energies
- The deepest thing of all - we are made in the image and likeness of God
- There is divine fire within us
- There is never enough - God has put timelessness in the human heart and therefore we never fit in to the natural rhythm of the world
- We have this powerful fire in us - the source of all that is good in us yet mired in all our addictions
- We have this superficial concept of ego - ego is good, Mother Theresa had an ego - but for her the ego was from God
- She had a huge ego but she was not an egotist
- These deep energies are dangerous - be careful with it; that energy can kill you
- The struggles - the image of God within us - deep struggles with grandiosity or depression, narcissism, rage or boredom
- Most of us won't write a great book because we are too sane
- Doris Lessing - submitted herself to various experiences - artists try it first, letting their sanity slip
- Artists pay the price - Nouwen didn't have a robust sanity
- Robert L Moore - the struggle between depression and inflation
- We cap ourselves, we get depressed because we do cap our creative energies
- Too bruised to be touched
- When you are affirmed you are re-fueled
- In ministry - you get over-stimulated either being inflated or being depressed, makes you prone to a lot of weaknesses, hurt
- When spiritual growth happens, the spirit falls into the senses and we struggle with strong obsessions
- sexuality is deeply connected to creativity
- When you say 'this energy is me' it will kill you
- Mistaking the icon with reality
- Godly appetites must be subject to disciplines
- Henri struggled to want the one thing
- He was a wounded healer
- The deepest pain is the inarticulate art, the sense of beauty that we can't draw, the story that we can't write, words underneath the threshold of consciousness
- To be a saint is to will the one thing - from Kierkegaard
- Struggling at a very deep level - Mother Theresa's diary - her relationship with the Lord was dark...
- Essential desire for God makes Henri a saint, a struggling saint who is a saint for our time - because we live in an age of excessive over-stimulation
- It is better to cry than to worry
- Are you taking your wounds to your head or your heart?
- Your heart is greater than your wounds
- Faith - some days we walk on water and other days we sink like a stone
- Default - you are not a restful person who sometimes experience restlessness; you are a restless person who sometimes experienced rest
- Sex is what is meant to take you home
- Irrigating the problem or eradicating problem
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